Last week I received the Silent Pro M2 850W PSU from Cooler Master. The Silent Pro M2 is Cooler Masterís second generation of the Silent Pro M series.
Cooler Masterís objective with this series is to bring an affordable, efficient and quiet power supply to its consumers. The Silent Pro M2 comes in 7 different wattages ranging from 420W to 1500W. Today though I shall be reviewing the 850W version. You can find this version for around 130 euros in Europe.
Cooler Masterís description of the Silent Pro M2 Series: The Silent Pro M2 is the 2nd Generation of Cooler Masters successful Silent Pro M Series. It features a powerful single 12V rail capable of powering a HighEnd PC with 8 Core CPUs and several VGAs running in SLI or X-Fire. Thanks to its skillfully crafted aluminum-copper heatsink combined with a 135mm Super Silent HDB fan it remains cool and virtually silent in typical operation. The modular cable system with flat wires helps you to create a neat and organized build with excellent airflow resulting in a cool and quiet System overall. The M2 series comes with no less than a 5 year warranty!

http://i1172.photobucket.com/albums/...entProM2-6.png
As you can see Silent Pro M2 is a semi-modular PSU. The 24-pin motherboard connector and two 8-pin CPU connectors are directly connected to the motherboard while the PCI-e, SATA and Molex cables are modular. The 2 CPU connectors are handy if you are planning on getting a dual processor system.
Cooler Master chose for the modular cables, flat black cables instead of the normally seen braided cables. They make your build look sleek especially. They also feel good and sturdy.
What I found disappointing though was that the non-modular cables werenít as sleek. They were just your plain old sleeved cables with the colors of the cables showing (i.e. yellow). It would have been nice if they also would have painted these black but this is a minor design issue.
I found the length of the cables long enough. I was able to install the PSU efficiently in my system without any hiccups. In a big tower you may find them short but I doubt it. (you can always purchase extensions then)
The amount of connectors you get, should satisfy most people. You get a total of 12 SATA connectors, 6 PCI-e connectors (3x PCI-e 8 pin and 3x PCI-e 6+2 pin) and 6 Molex connectors. Enough to give power to several drives and up to 3 GPUís.
Here a picture of the connectors on the PSU:

The PSU itself is painted in a nice matt black. On both sides you can find a Silent Pro M2 850W decal in big letters. But sadly they are both facing the same direction, so there is only one way to mount the PSU if you want to have the text on the sides not upside down. In my system, I ended up having to put the fan at the top because my case (Antec Nine Hundred v2) doesnít have an airvent at the bottom. This of course resulted in the text on the side being upside down as you can see in the photo below. It would have been nice if they had taken this into account. Otherwise a nice looking PSU which will look nice in your setup. My setup at the moment is:
- AMD Phenom II 965 BE
- Asus Crosshair III Formula
- 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
- Gigabyte HD 5850
- Crucial M4 64 GB
- 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
- Antec Nine Hundred Two

Upon opening the PSU, you can see the internal heatsinks that cover a vast majority of the area. This is good news as far as cooling your PSU which should ensure that the fan can run at low speeds, hence be quiet. It made it though difficult to be able to see the rest of the components.

Cooler Master opted for a 135mm fan, modelnumber DFS132512M. It says Cooler Master but found out online that the fan is actually from Young Ling Tech., rated at 12V, 0.2A, 2.4W, 1500RPM, 34.44dBA, 78.13CFM. The reason behind such a large fan, would be to keep the fanspeed low and of course the noise.

When installed in my system, I found the PSU to be very quiet. Barely audible which is a big plus if you are looking for a quiet system. Cooler Master delivers on its Silent Pro name.

Conclusion

I wasnít able to fully test the PSU as I donít have the tools yet to test it fully but plan to get the right tools in the future. This ended up being more of a preview than review. Overall I was impressed by the Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 850W. It has a nice matt black design (except for the issue with logo on the side of the PSU), good specifications, semi-modular design, good and sturdy cables, though I would have liked to have the non-modular cables also painted black. As far as installing, I had no problems whatsoever. I was able to keep my system clean and hide lots of the cables and was pleased with the length of the cables.

If you are in the market for high-wattage PSU to power your Crossfire/SLI systems, then you should definitely take a look at the Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 850W. As far as efficiency though I canít say much at the moment as Iím not able to fully test it.

All in all, a good PSU that should satisfy most users.

DanielG27

June 20, 2012 02:29 PM

PS: This was my first review. I'm a student studying in IT. PC hardware is a big interest of mine and I sure would like to do this more in the future. If you have any suggestions, please fire away.